Is this it
by peytonleeharper
Summary: irina reflects. moody. read and review
1. Default Chapter

They will wonder about me; I know they will. They will spend immeasurable, endless hours examining the evidence. Their minds will whirl with what they know about me. What they think they know. Their tenuous theories about me and their haughty moral sanctimony do not affect me in the least. If I needed to, I could assuage the harshness of my behavior. Blame it on the environs in which I was reared. There was no sin and no God. They will say I was a heartless beast. So be it. But I cannot abide them telling her that I never loved her. That she was a ruse. Part of a Machiavellian plan in which she played only a tiny, unimportant role. She was the only thing in my life that I ever wanted to protect. The KGB did not want me to have that child. They surmised that it would make me weak; unloyal. But I fought for her. She did not arrive in this world for any other reason than my wanting her here. In the delivery room I handled the pain that reduces other women to shrieks of agony because I felt no unease at all. Sydney came into the world in the most peaceful way. When the doctor placed her tiny, shriveled baby's body in my arms it was the closest thing I had ever felt to unbridled joy. If there was a God in heaven, I knew how he felt after creating the face of pure beauty. I could not rip my eyes away from her. Already, there was an intense connection. She was such a happy baby. She almost never cried. She would look up at me with those too-serious brown eyes and I would know what she wanted. Now, in my cell I remember everything about her. It is how I spend countless hours. I can feel the silky texture of her hair curled around my fingers. I smile as I remember how I watched her for hours on end. Anything she did I found amazing. My awe was genuine, and that, they do not know. They could never understand the pride I felt watching Sydney fingerpaint, or toddle across the carpet from her father to me. And she was an exceptionally bright child. How could she not be? She began to exhibit the signs of having a photographic memory. Hearing that little girl laugh brought tears to my eyes. I knew for her, I would do anything. I remember Jack and I talking while she played near us in the park. Sunlight streaming down upon her and those dimples that made her beautiful as the Botticelli angels. The soft white skin that showed easily every bruise and scrape. I was spellbound by her perfection.  
  
I've killed and I'll have to again I'm sure. And I swear I'll kill anyone who tries to tell her I don't love her. She is the most beautiful, sinless, perfect girl on earth and she is mine to protect. She always will be. Why did I leave if I love her so much? They threatened her, of course. She is the only link to my heart.Wars could be waged based on my love for her. I would do anything to save her and they don't know it. I left a little baby of six alone and vulnerable. I know I have a heart because it's breaking now. 


	2. 2

The walls of this prison are closing in on me. Moving so quickly that if I close my eyes I know they will crush me. How long  
  
have I been here? I am nowhere near accuracy in my conjecture. At night, after the last straggling curious faces have passed  
  
by, and the last threats have been issued, I am left to my own devices. I am left to nothing more than thoughts. And  
  
thoughts slip away so that you wish you only had string long enough to tether them to the earth. But they break from the  
  
moors of the mind and wash away in the tides that bring the new. Invariably, with no execption, my thoughts turn to my  
  
child. And she is very much my child. A thought that both thrills and frightens me.  
  
I remember her warm little body pressed so trustingly against mine. That and memories so like it kept my blood warm on  
  
nights when it wanted to freeze. Touch itself used to be such a common occurence. Trust, too.  
  
Now, I can count on one hand the number of times I have touched my daughter. Each time was a timid grasp or an uncertain  
  
stroke of my hand upon her cheek. Neither of which are fitting to women such as us. When Cuvee was watching me in  
  
Taipei like the voyeuristic sadist that he is, I wanted to turn away from her.  
  
Storm down the hall and put a bullet into his head. Set her free.  
  
But I could not. Things had already been set into motion before the arrival of my daughter. And I would not sacrifice them.  
  
So I had to sacrifice her. In such a way that it sickened me. I sacrificed her to save her but I was full with shame.  
  
I saw her reel backwards as the chunk blew forward from her shoulder. I left the room and choked down vomit before  
  
returning to Cuvee. A loyalty proven. And a trust broken.  
  
That night I dreamed she was an infant. Giggling and laughing as I washed her in the tub. Her flaccid, baby's limbs depending  
  
upon me for support. I held her up gently, holding her head above the water before she slipped from my grasp.  
  
Yesterday on the roof I grabbed her because if I had not I would've sunken to my knees and lost my self in my tortured grief.  
  
We were pressed together again. I reclaimed her. I wrapped my arms around her and my bitter tears flowed like a river  
  
undammed. I defy anyone to try and hurt her like I did. I defy Jack to keep her from me. I'll rip this cell apart and  
  
do the same to Sloane if she is his victim.  
  
I defy Rambaldi and his prophecies, Satan and his minions, or Jesus and his saints to take her away from me. 


	3. Maybe not

I am not really so hard to read. For all their labeling and diagnoses you would think that someone would be able to figure me out. They must have dozens of analysts around the world whose sole objective is to deconstruct Derevko. Some are too prejudiced to try. Jack, above all, fears to look me in the eye. He is afraid I will see through his mask of contempt. I wish he would try and see past mine. But they have been in place too long, our masks. Erected decades ago as armor for our own private Cold War. Some are simply too confused to make much progress. Agent Vaughn is one of these. He knows how he should feel about me. But he looks and sees something achingly familiar in me. And I can see that he has grown to respect me. Reluctantly, but he has. It pains me to know that Sydney cannot read me. She can read my emotions well enough but ,y heart breaks with the knowledge that she has to wonder if my feelings are genuine. We used to play a game together. We would try to read each others minds. I could see immediately whatever she wanted in her eyes. She would laugh and say, Mommy, you're magic. I would smile at her and tell her that Mommy always knew what she needed. Then it would be her turn and she would crawl up into my lap and take my face in her hands. She would bite her lip and look up into my eyes seriously. I would see the puzzlement in her eyes. Before long she would break into a smile, with cherubic dimples forming on each side of her pouting little lips. Her way of signaling defeat. Every time we played this game I thought the same thing. I only wished that she would see that all I wanted was for her to know that I loved her.  
  
Now she is so grown up but nothing has changed. Her eyes are more serious. And they are much darker than when she was a child. More like mine. I hate that. They are my eyes now. When I look into them they swirl like an ocean that holds mysteries I'll never know the depth of.  
  
Perhaps I am impossible to read. If I cannot read her, when her eyes are so like mine, it must be the same with me. 


	4. You Again

Sydney herself is not capable of torture. The act of forcing prolonged inhuman pain on a person. Physically and consciously she is not capable. Mentally though. I have no doubt that Sydney could torture with the best of them. Manipulate if she had to. I don't know if she would like it. This thought is one that plagues the corners of my mind with indecision and doubt. I hope to God she would not like it. But almost surely, in some instances, I believe that she couldn't help herself. I am tortured by Sydney's past and present. By the events that have shaped them both. I must be a hypocrite of magnificent proportions. I think of the way I guarded her, like a fierce hawk. What right did I have to do so? Well, every right. I had a mother's right. It was not by my choice that I forfeit this right. In actuality, I never did. Though perhaps if I had I would not have had such the hold on Sydney that I did . Or do. For it is not only in the past but in the present that something about me holds her captive.But it is the same for me. Powerfully and irresistably I am drawn to her. When Sydney began to toddle around our house, wobbling on her uncertain legs, I began to see every step, corner, table edge, and incline as my enemy. A strange enemy. I put child gates on every door and locks on all the cabinets. I picked her foods with such care. It is almost ridiculous to think that so many of the crimes I have commited against her, I still feel so guilty for forcing her to eat broccolli. Her little lips would close determinedly as if they were cemented. Her father and I would coax her and berate her until we finally gave up. My little girl was so brave even then. She stood up to older children and "rescued" people all the time. If someone so much as gave me a backward glance Sydney would stare them down until I finally had to pick her up and carry her away. I would hold her hand at the doctor as the needle would prick her skin. Watching, transfixed as I saw it plunge into her vein. Pulsing with the blood that made her mine. Now I see the way the veins stood out against her pale skin and I think of times she has received "alternate medication" in her adult life. I was tortured many times, but none of that pain comes close to that which I suffer from knowing that those pains have been inflicted on my daughter. I can hardly entertain the thought of how many times she has been brutalized. I saw her scars in Taipei while she rested unconscious in that cold chair. One of my doctors looked into her mouth and relayed to me that she had endured rather unprofessional dental work at least twice. If Sydney has not killed the bastard already I'll do it myself. I think of my daughter often. I have nothing but the time to do so. Time is after all the great leveler. It is a worthy adversary but everyone learns that time cannot be fought. And it most certainly cannot be waited out. Things can get better with time. Remedy themselves. Or get worse. That is why the mind remembers. It is why we replay pivotal images in our lives. Many that will haunt us until the day that we die. When time will stand triumphant over us. The defeated ones. 


	5. cab ride

I think I may be drunk. The man across the bar smiles at me. I offer him one of my official "Kendall you're a jackass but I am at work and you are my boss" smiles. They are unnatural and barely register on any other level besides utter annoyance. They come to me too quickly now. My smile is something I am losing to this game. Vaughn fights to keep it but I know it's fading. I am drunk. I just want my own car. My car has never betrayed me. Rain pelts my head from above and I know this is the only way it could be today.  
  
Oh I know I'm drunk. Whiskey tastes so good and I've got one in the hand that is moving ever-closer to my lips as I get in the cab. Vaughn tastes better than liquor but I had to be alone. I had to grieve over my mother and his enemy by myself. I wouldn't ask him to help me. I know he would but I just could not ask that of him. I lie constantly to people I know. Now I have to lie to myself. I stare out the window and smile at my reflection. I am not crying. This doesn't hurt. She didn't wound a defenseless six year old. This time she screwed with a 27 year old woman who was old enough to want to get hurt. The one's who know about my mother's latest treacheries against me gave me pitying looks today as I grabbed my jacket and left the building. Don't they know this doesn't hurt me? The cabbie asks me if I said something. I polish off the rest of my liquor and say in a harsh voice that belongs to someone I never want to meet, "I don't hurt". He says something but I give up-  
  
My mother and I are sitting in her cell and she is smilingat me. We talk and she whispers that she knows the secret of life. I lean in and she tucks my hair behind my ear before kissing my brow and telling me that the truth takes time. But what's important is that we're together.  
  
-----Someone is banging on my window and pulls me out of the cab. I feel his lips on my cheek and he says ," I wish you had let me go with you". I can't do it anymore. My knees buckle. I can't lie. It hurts 


End file.
